CI vs Fleming
by fairsailor
Summary: Carmichael Industries what action to take against Professor Fleming. Sort of an AU to anthropocenes Chuck Season 6 AU.


**Standard Disclaimer : **I don't own Chuck.

I got this idea after reading anthropocenes' Chuck Season 6. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it/them, they are a fun read.

This doesn't exactly happen in that AU. If you're a proponent of the Multiverse Theory, (and who isn't), consider this as happening, (has happened, will happen), behind a door a few steps farther down the hallway.

* * *

"Well", Chuck said, as everyone sat down in the CI conference room, "I guess we need to decide what to do about Fleming and Saldana."

"Kill them both", said Morgan immediately.

"Second", replied Alex quickly. "Then we mark the body dumps so we can go by and piss on them from time to time."

"Second that", Morgan said, taking Alexs hand in his.

"Guys, we can't do that, Morgan..", Chuck said, clearly startled by his friends viciousness, "we can't do something like that."

"Don't Morgan me Chuck, you clean the wax out of your ears and listen to me dammit" Morgan said firmly. "Saldana is betraying her oath to our country, and betraying General Beckman, both of which are capital offences in my book." It was odd, Chuck thought, seeing the determination in his friends' eyes, but he knew that in her own way General Diane Beckman was actually fond of Morgan, though he shied away from the idea of the torture it would take to make her admit it.

"But even with all her bad-ass whiz bang tech, Saldanas' just another thug, she just looks and dresses better than most that we run into. Give Saldana to the General, she'll deal with her in ways I don't even want to try to imagine", Morgan continued, unconsciously echoing Chucks' thoughts, "but the real bad guy is Fleming, that asshole."

"He's lying when he says he wants to work with you on the Intersect," Morgan said, "even I can see that. He wants all the adulation, the glory, the Nobel Prize for himself. And the only way he can ensure that is to make sure that no one, no one,", glancing around at the people in the conference room, "including Ellie, Devon, and even little Clara, can dispute his story. And the only way he can do that is to kill everybody. Tell me I'm wrong."

"But more that that Chuck, man more that that, he's evil. Really, really evil. I think you guys", he said, waving his free hand at Chuck, Sarah, Casey, and Mary, "you've seen and dealt with so many bad guys you're just looking at him like he's just one more, and he's not. He wants, he wants…"

"He wants to be God", Alex joined in, still gripping Morgans hand so tightly everyone else expected to hear popping bones. "He wants people to think what he wants them to think, do what he wants them to do, act how he wants them to act. Not just a few, not an army, every last human being on the planet. And he will use the Intersect to make that happen. And I won't allow that. He dies."

"But more that that," she continued, "he would harm all those that I love and cherish. For that, I'll kill the vile, despicable, son of a bitch. I'll tear open his chest, rip out his heart, and eat it." Everyone around the table marveled that at that moment, Alex looked just exactly like her father. On a very very bad day…

" 'We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us'", Casey said, then looked around, "What. I don't just read _**Guns and Ammo. **_Even though ithad a very murky lineage, it's an ideal that I've tried to live by. And now I find I failed", turning to Alex, "I'm sorry honey."

"Not failed Dad, never failed", Alex said to her father, her eyes instantly turning from ice to warm summer sky blue. "Never failed, but you do have to strap on your armor again."

"Luckily I never leave home without it", Casey replied, his eyes uncharacteristically warm. "I'm proud of you." His gaze shifted to Morgan, "I'm proud of both of you."

He turned back to his right, taking in Mary, Sarah, and Chuck, and said, "McHugh and Grimes are right, they see the threat more clearly than we do. We kill the vile, despicable son of a bitch."

"In the", Mary began.

"Bryce really hated him", Sarah said quietly, surprising everyone by cutting Mary off. She glanced shyly at her mother-in-law, and Mary smiled and gestured for her to continue.

"I mean really, really hated him. Loathed him. There's just no way I think I can explain…", she looked at her husband, then across at Morgan, who despite the tension in the room was trying to smile. "Think _**Stranger in a Strange Land **_Martian hate, a hate so black it would devour a quantum singularity without a hiccup."

"Ding DIng DINg DING!, and Mrs. Sarah Bartowski wins a thousand points and gallops into first place in the quarterly Carmichael Industries nerd contest", Morgans' hands shot into the air, his right still grasping Alexs' hand.

Casey grunted, one of his many 'my future son-in-law is such a moron and what the hell does my daughter see in him' grunts, while Mary rolled her eyes with a small smile. Even Chuck grinned slightly and shook his head. The tension in the room abated slightly, and Sarah gave her husband a small smile and squeezed his hand, then placed both her hands on the table and pushed up, muttering 'just give me a moment' to her husband, getting up from her chair and performing a couple of quick stretches before sitting back down.

Looking at Casey and Mary she began quietly, "Bryce and I had been partnered about a year when we had an op blow up on us in Eastern Germany. Supposed to be a simple pickup, next thing we know the Russian FSB, German BND, the French DGSE are all after us. Not to mention the freelance mercs that joined the party."

"You know how it is when an op blows up like that." Mary and Casey both nodded, still listening, but obviously thinking when similar things had happened to them. "You have backup plans, contacts, rally points, supply caches, ways to egress. Well, surprise surprise, they were all blown as well. We ran for three weeks before the Agency finally managed to get us out."

"Running like that, even with training, is at its' very best hell on your system. You run, find some cover, a hotel room, a safe house you hope, an abandoned car. You get maybe an hours sleep, two if you are really lucky. Then you run again, find some cover, get maybe another hours sleep." Her voice and manner had shifted into the mode she often used with Alex and Morgan when teaching them the basics of tradecraft. "There is a reason sleep deprivation is such a fundamental part of any interrogation."

"You have to eat and drink, but you have to be careful what you consume, especially in a foreign country. You don't want a spastic colon", she eyed her husband with a mock glare and gave him a quick punch to the shoulder, "on top of everything else. You're sick as well, your immune system at a low ebb, so any cold or flu virus your body would normally shrug off has a field day. You've got a headache, your nerves are stretched so tightly they could be used to slice bread, and you have to keep it together, stay in control, look normal, like you belong."

"We were in this little hotel outside Warsaw. Smelled like it hadn't been cleaned or even aired in decades. Cold water that never ran clear, sheets and towels that stripped skin, mattress made from gravel."

"And I tried to lighten things up by saying my recruiter had never mentioned any of this."

"Bryce got a look on his face that I only saw the one time, and he responded, almost dreamily, "Oh, I'm going to kill mine. "

"It was like he was talking about the weather, the sun rising the next morning. Something inevitable. Then he said that even though Fleming didn't have any children, he said that in his younger days he had been quite the Lothario, and he was going to have to do an interrogation to make sure that all of Flemings DNA was removed for the gene pool. Bryce talked about pulling fingernails, teeth, vivisection. Then it got dark."

"Then it got Dark? Then it got DARK?", Chuck exclaimed, "Sarah, Bryce was talking about doing a live action replay of the Spanish Inquisition on Professor Fleming, and then it got dark?"

"Chuck, what made it so dark was how clinical Bryce was about it. The drugs he would use to ensure Fleming remained awake and responsive during the interrogation, then using a couple, not one but two NSA incinerators to ensure the destruction of the remains. The debrief, and that's what Bryce called it, the debrief, finding out if Fleming had any children and removing them, that was something Bryce felt he had to do, and he wasn't smiling or talking as if it was something he was going to enjoy, just a task that had to be completed. Killing Fleming, talking about killing him, that was the part he liked."

Sarah reached out and grabbed the carafe off the conference table and poured a glass of water, drank all of it in one go, then refilled the glass, putting the carafe back on the table. She noticed Casey eyeing her, and said 'What John?",

"Nothing Walker", he replied, looking slightly abashed. "It's just this is the most I've heard you say at one time in six years".

"With family I can let my guard down John, you know that", then laughed as Casey looked down, trying to hide the slight blush that infused his features as grins ran around the table at Casey's discomfort. The big man allowed a "yeah yeah ok you got me" grunt to escape.

"But sit still John, I've still got some talking to do, I want to get it out', Sarah said, taking another drink of water then placing the glass back on the table. "They got us out, but not before Bryce took a bullet, actually two bullets, for me during the extraction. So I owed him for that, among other things."

"During the debriefings after we got back, I had this one session with an Agency shrink. She was focused on anything the stress had caused Bryce to say or do. It bothered me to do it, but I just felt I had to bring up Bryces' talking about killing his recruiter, and she actually kind of laughed, said that reaction was so common it approached being just a checkbox on the extreme stress checklist, even asked me if I had considered killing mine."

"So I didn't push it, covered a big lie with a little lie, said yeah I'd had the same thoughts, and a few months later we were both returned to field duty. Convinced myself, allowed myself to take comfort in Bryce's intentions being a normal reaction to extreme stress. Pounded that square peg in the round hole, and just did my best to ignore the pieces that didn't fit and broke off, floating around, occasionally screaming for my attention. Field agents have to be able to compartmentalize, and I am, was, a good field agent."

"What do you mean was", Alex piped up. "Are, still are, always will be the best!" Beside her Morgan was nodding so hard agreeing with Alex everyone looking at him wondered how his head stayed attached to his neck.

"Thanks guys," Sarah responded, a hint of blush on her cheeks. "Just a little more."

Taking another sip of water, she continued, "Then Chuck got the Intersect, and we got that mission to Stanford to extract Fleming. I didn't put the pieces together until later, he was already down with the crossbow bolt when Casey and I got to him so he didn't really register. It wasn't until later, when we reviewed the files that just who he was hit me, this was the guy Bryce planned to kill, no, that's too mild, eradicate."

"But this time it was even easier to block out, pounding a round peg into a square hole this time and again ignoring the pieces floating around. I convinced myself it was just the guilt Bryce felt about screwing Chuck over that was his reason for Fleming. I had so many balls in the air, the way I felt about Chuck, it was just easy to pack all that into a nice little box and forget about it."

"Then we met him at the restaurant, and I knew why Bryce hated him so much, planned to kill him in the manner he discussed so easily, so calmly. Morgan and Alex are right, they see him more clearly than we do, he is a foul, malicious, thing that will use the Intersect technology to turn human beings into playtoys for his amusement. That is his endgame, and killing him is the right thing to do."

"Chuck", Sarah continued, taking her husbands hand and forcing him to look into her eyes, to see the pain and the sadness, but also the determination and certainty. "This isn't a Red Test, this is removing a threat to not just the United States but the entire human race."

Though she remained seated, still holding his hand, her eyes looking into his, asking for his understanding, it seemed to Chuck that she had stood up, strong and proud, her shoulders back and crystal blue eyes flashing fire, ready to do battle. Her next words both surprised him and set off a deep bell in his soul, as he wondered for what seemed the billionth time what Sarah Walker saw in him.

"I stand on the bridge, and while I live, evil shall not pass."

The silence seemed to stretch for days, and when Chuck glanced at the others around the table he was unsurprised to see both Casey and his mother nodding in acceptance to his wife's statement, and it seemed the sparkle in Alex and Morgans eyes should light the room.

Mary cleared her throat, startling everyone, and smiled. "After that, this will seem anticlimactic, but as I was saying before I was interrupted", giving her daughter-in-law a stern glance that made Sarah laugh and gesture for her to continue.

"Anyway", Mary continued, "In the 20s and 30s the US, the British, French, Russians, the Danes, the Poles, even the Belgians had plans to assassinate, no let's not mince words, kill Adolf Hitler. It's not surprising of course, in every intelligence organization is a department or office that makes such plans. But several of the agencies went further. They gathered resources, put assets in place, designed and built weapons."

"But no one was willing to take the final step, and we all know what happened. All the death and destruction that followed, in many ways the loss of innocence for all of us, the entire race."

"There are reasons for that of course. No one had a crystal ball, knew the course the Third Reich would really take, knew how World War II would unfold, everyone was just thinking a replay of World War I. Add in the fact that kings do not like their subjects killing other kings. It gives their people ideas you see, that perhaps the king, president, premier, whatever isn't really needed, isn't really invulnerable."

"But I know what can happen, what will happen if we allow Fleming to acquire the Intersect." She looked at her son, and Chuck felt she saw him as a child again, someone needing, requiring her protection. "It was your Fathers' greatest fear Chuck, far beyond the fear he felt for you and Ellie and the danger his and my life and career choices placed you both in. He knew how the Intersect could be used, how it was likely to be used, but we decided the potential outweighed the risks. Fleming is a risk, a risk that has to be eliminated. It's both that simple, and that difficult. We kill him."

"Wow Mrs. B", Morgan broke in after a few moments. "Could I get copies of those plans?"

"What?", he continued, when he noticed everyone looking at him. "They might be useful for Assassins Creed".

"No don't give them to him, Mrs. Bartowski, please. I'll never get the game controller out of his hand if you do", Alex said mournfully.

"Don't worry Alex", Sarah countered in a soft purring voice. "I'll teach you some things that I guarantee will cause Morgan to toss away the controller."

"Dammit Walker", Casey thundered, slamming his hand down on the table, "That's my daughter you're teaching CIA seduction techniques, and I won't allow it."

"Screw you John", Sarah countered, with a fey smile and a devilish sparkle in her eyes, "Alex is a woman, my friend and business partner, and more than that she's family."

"Besides, it's not like she could ever ask you for help. You did fail the seduction course twice."

Casey slammed both fists onto the table, then banged his head against the back of the office chair. As the red slowly faded from his vision, he noticed Grimes and his daughter both staring at him intently. Turning his head to the right, he found Walker and Bartowski giving him the same intent, clinical stare. He turned further and looked at Mary, but she just gave him a shrug and an "I have no idea" look.

Growling like an enraged grizzly, he looked at his three supposed friends and daughter with all the fiercely directed focus he could muster and said, "Someone had better start talking, and soon, or I'm going to get really, really, really pissed off."

"Well Dad" "It's like this Casey" "See Colonel if.."

"Stop", Casey thundered, "all of you shut up. You Grimes," he said, pointing at the little bearded one, "Tell me what this is about."

"See, it's like this sir…."

"Grimes…"

"OK, OK, if the girls ever actually make stream come out of your ears, Chuck and I have to do all the house cleaning, office cleaning, car washing, dish washing, clothes washing, etc., for a year. Basically, we'd be their slaves, catering to their every whim for 365 days, 24 hours per day. Sorry."

"But we were betting on you Casey, being the super cool spy that you are to never lose it', Chuck interjected. John glared at him, then sighed.

"What do you get if you win morons?"

"Well, now that I think about it, we never really said," Chuck replied, turning and looking at his wife who gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence that he had learned, painfully at times, meant 'I totally own your ass and will throughout all eternity.' He sighed loudly, "Morgan, have we ever actually won a bet with the girls?"

"Why no Charles, now that I think about it, I don't think we ever have", was the response.

"Figures", Casey rasped, "You two idiots make a bet with no thought to winning, and even if you lose you'll be doing the exact same thing you're already doing, treating these two", pointing at Sarah and Alex, "as if they are the most precious things on earth. Which incidentally Grimes is the only reason you're still drawing breath."

Mary cut into the laughter that followed, "I'm sorry to rain on this parade, but we have only a small window here. Our hole card is that while Fleming will expect a snatch and grab, he won't see us as willing to kill him. Carmichael Industries doesn't do that sort of thing. But we'll only have the one chance, and it has to be right the first time. I'm sorry Chuck, so very sorry, but you have to decide."

Chuck looked down at the floor, covering his face with his hands. Sarah rubbed his shoulders, feeling his trembling body, murmuring "Oh Chuck" over and over again as his trembling finally stilled. She felt him take a deep breath, then sit up, capturing her hand and squeezing it, but avoiding looking at her.

"All right, let's do this." Chuck said, still ducking his wifes' gaze. "Morgan, you work with Sarah. I want you to put together up close, in your face options, edged weapons, poisons. Mo.., Mary, you and Alex work on short range plans, two bullets in the back of the head, shotgun in an elevator, things like that. Channel Al Pacino. Casey and I will put together medium and long range solutions, plus any heavy weapons use. Concentrate on the area I assigned you, but don't hesitate to think outside the box."

"For instance, it's a given that Casey and I will propose a .50 caliber Barrett 'Hi How Are You?' headshot from 1000 meters."

"And it has to be vicious, make the others, and there will be others, think twice before making a similar attempt. And hopefully give us enough time to put the Intersect that Dad envisioned into place."

Chuck finally turned to his wife, again taking her hand, and she saw underneath the cold determination the deep sadness that was grinding at his soul. She traded a quick glance with her mother in law, and felt rather the saw the almost non existent nod, and knew. Knew that no matter what plan she or Mary presented, no matter how good it seemed to be, the plan that would eventually be chosen to kill Fleming would be Chucks plan, and that Alex and Morgan would have no involvement.

Chuck would do everything in his power to ensure that the nightmares he had, the nightmares that had Sarah holding Chuck while he sobbed like a child would not become a part of their friends lives. The same nightmares she sometimes herself had, that had her crying while Chuck held her, stroked her body slowly, patiently, telling her it was OK, she'd be OK. He would not allow those nightmares to visit their friends. He would carry all the guilt, all the imagined shame for the decision on his shoulders.

It was Chuck. It was what he did.


End file.
